How can the heat of spontaneous human combustion not spread to nearby objects?

Question

So we all know no one knows what SHC is or works, but how can heat so intense it can vaporize flesh and turn bone be contained within a space so small that it somehow does not even burn up the extremeties of the body?

I've seen pics of SHC where a charred body would have vaporized while sitting on a couch, yet the couch is miracolously untouched and the limbs and head are unburned, even some clothing is intact. How can such an intense heat not spread so far that it combusts the entire room as well?

Answer 1

Your confusion lies in the sentence "How can such an intense heat not spread so far that it combusts the entire room as well?" You are presuming an intense heat for some reason. In my mind, the fact that nothing else burns means the heat was NOT intense.

The best hypothesis for this phenomenon is that the fat in the body melts and flows into a substance that works like a wick, such as clothing or upholstery. The fire burns rather slowly and tamely so nearby temperatures don't increase enough to flash combust anything. This is just like the fire in a candle wick not burning the parts of the wick that are just below the flame, or a candle burning down to nothing without significantly heating up whatever it was sitting on.

The fat hypothesis explains why the head and limbs and associated clothes are unburned.

You could do a simple experiment. Take a nice slab (not slices) of bacon and a long needle and thread a nice thick piece of cotton yarn through a fatty section. Warm the bacon to body temperature (maybe in a microwave on low or a warm oil bath). Put the bacon on a pan or metal outside. Maybe stick some rags or newspaper around the bacon, but not in contact to simulate "the rest of the room" Light the yarn that is sticking out. Shield the whole set up from wind so you don't have flaming pieces of wick flaking off and setting dry grass in your neighbor's yard on fire.

I bet all the fat burns away over a period of many hours, leaving behind fairly uncooked meat, and unignited rags.

You might try repeating the experiment with a strip of cloth just sitting on top of the bacon. Again, the bacon has to be warm enough for some of the fat to flow. Maybe a large enough cloth will cook the whole slab, but I bet it still takes hours and the area around it doesn't get super hot.

Answer 2

They're not humans.They are more like anti matter creatures.They get high on drugs and blow up.